could not be eliminated. In other words,
a Creator in which the more essential element of creative force was
wanting, was contrary to all human experience and observation. Indeed
nothing could be plainer than that the deified male principle could of
itself create nothing, and that it was dependent for its very existence
on the female element.

By this attempt to construct a masculine Deity, absurdities were
presented to the human judgment and understanding which for ages could
not be overcome, and by it contradictions were necessitated which could
not be reconciled with human reason and with the ideas of Nature which
had hitherto been held by mankind. It was not, therefore, until reason
had been suspended in all matters pertaining to religion, and blind
faith in the machinations of priestcraft had been established, that a
male God was set up as the sole Creator of the universe.

When women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of
individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the capture
of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or instruments for
the gratification and pleasure of men, Perceptive Wisdom or Light,
and Maternal Affection the Preserver of the race, gradually became
eliminated from the god-idea of mankind. Passion became God. It was the
Creator in the narrowest and most restricted sense.

Although in an age of pure Nature-worship the ideas connected with
reproduction, like those related to all other natural functions, were
wholly unconnected with impurity either of thought or deed, still when
an age arrived in which all checks to human passion had been withdrawn,
and the lower propensities had gained dominion over the higher
faculties, the influence of fertility or passion-worship on human
development or growth may in a degree be imagined.

The fact must be borne in mind that curing the later ages of
passion-worship the creative processes and the reproductive organs were
deified, not as an expression or symbol of the operations of Nature, but
as a means to the stimulation of the lower animal instincts in man.

With religion bestialized and its management regulated wholly with an
idea to the gratification of man's sensuous desires, religious temples,
under the supervision of the priesthood, became brothels, in which were
openly practiced as part and parcel of religious rites and ceremonies
the most wanton profligacy and the most shameless self-abandonment.
The worship